English Vocabulary - The difference between "want" & "need"

By special request, straight to you, coming from me on www.engvid.com, we have a lesson

about the differences between "want" and "need".

Does anyone know the differences?

One of these words is very much stronger than the other one.

Does anyone know the stronger word?

Do you think it's "need"?

Or "want"?

The answer is "need".

If you need something, it is what we call in English a necessity.

For example, we as humans, I hope everyone is a human out there, we need water.

If we do not have water, we will die.

We also need food.

Once again, if we do not eat any food, we will die.

We also need shelter, that's a house, a roof over our heads, and sunshine.

I'm sure if we didn't have sunshine, we'd all be very sad.

So need is a necessity, like food and water in life.

It is very important.

If we do not have this, we will die.

So we need it.

It's very urgent.

Want, you can think of like desire, oh what a lovely word.

If you want something, you desire it.

Now I've just told you that as humans, we need water.

Sometimes we just don't want water though.

Sometimes we prefer beer, or maybe you have a craving for a big glass of milk.

We do not need beer, if you can believe it, we don't need beer.

We do need water.

We want beer.

We want milk.

We will not die if we don't get beer.

We will not die if we do not get milk.

Water's a different story.

The other thing you can think about is food.

We all need food to eat, but sometimes we have cravings for different food.

Your friends might say, "Oh, I really want pizza tonight."

Pizza is of course a food, but it's something that you desire.

Before I started this lesson, I had a great idea of what I wanted for dinner.

I said, "I want a Caesar salad."

I don't need a Caesar salad.

If I don't have a Caesar salad, I will not die, but it's what I desire, it's what I want.

The other thing that's kind of fun and will help you sound a little bit more of a natural

speaker is the pronunciation of these words.

We usually say "want to" plus a verb.

So for example, if I say, "I want to eat pizza."

You will never hear a natural speaker say, "Wow, I want to eat pizza."

We will change "want to" and say "wanna."

Most natural speakers will say, "I want to eat some pizza."

So when we have "want" plus "to," we change it to "wanna" or "want-wanna" is better, not

"wanna."

"Want-wanna."

When we have "need" plus a verb, so some people may say, "I need to go shopping."

Maybe they lost all their clothes at the airport and they really need to buy some new clothes.

We don't say, "I need to go shopping."

Can you guess what we say?

We say, "I need to go shopping."

Practice that, "I need to go shopping," "I need to go to the toilet," "I wanna eat pizza,"

"I wanna drink some beer."

That's all for right now.

Bye-bye.